Free Republic

Top US diplomat Marco Rubio says he does not have high expectations for peace talks due to be held between Ukraine and Russia in Turkey and asserted that Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin needed to meet. "It's my assessment that I don't think we're going to have a breakthrough here until President Trump and President Putin interact directly on this topic," he said, speaking after a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in southern Turkey. Earlier in the day, Trump - who is visiting the Middle East - also suggested that significant progress in peace talks was unlikely until...

KYIV, Ukraine—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed back on a U.S. proposal to recognize Russia’s control of Crimea as part of a cease-fire agreement, throwing into doubt President Trump’s efforts to bring a quick end to the war. “Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea,” Zelensky said at a press conference here on Tuesday. “There’s nothing to talk about here. This is against our constitution.” Zelensky’s dismissal upends Trump’s latest gambit to halt the war in Ukraine—now in its fourth year—and casts new uncertainty on the future of the relationship between Kyiv and Washington, which Trump has made conditional...

KYIV — The terrible cost of Russia’s continuing assault on Ukraine is viscerally clear at a military rehabilitation center on the outskirts of this city. Soldiers there describe how their bodies were shattered on the front lines. And they’re the lucky ones who survived. Alexei was trying to hold his position at Pokrovsk, the scene of some of this year’s heaviest fighting, when a drone dropped a grenade near him. His left leg and right hand were nearly severed, attached by thin threads of tissue but now mended. Nikolai lost his left leg in Kharkiv, another Russian target. He waited...

Vladimir Putin is feeling the stress from Russia's invasion of Ukraine - as he is seen wringing his hands in a meeting with his top officials after Volodymyr Zelenskyy's troops bit back and made a counter-incursion into the country. The dictator, 71, was in a security council session on the crisis he faces due to Ukraine's dramatic invasion of the border areas of Kursk region. His very public hand-wringing and fidgeting came as he was told earlier this week about how Russia had lost territory to Kyiv troops and - at the time - more than two dozen settlements, a...